Episode 2319
Rotating locomotion in living systems
Sun, 2023-Sep-10 01:02 UTC
Length - 2:07
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Sunday, 10 September 2023 is Rotating locomotion in living systems.
Several organisms are capable of rolling locomotion. However, true wheels and propellers—despite their utility in human vehicles—do not seem to play a significant role in the movement of living things (with the exception of certain flagella, which work like corkscrews). Biologists have offered several explanations for the apparent absence of biological wheels, and wheeled creatures have appeared often in speculative fiction.
Given the ubiquity of the wheel in human technology, and the existence of biological analogues of many other technologies (such as wings and lenses), the lack of wheels in the natural world would seem to demand explanation—and the phenomenon is broadly explained by two main factors. First, there are several developmental and evolutionary obstacles to the advent of a wheel by natural selection, addressing the question "Why can't life evolve wheels?" Secondly, wheels are often at a competitive disadvantage when compared with other means of propulsion (such as walking, running, or slithering) in natural environments, addressing the question "If wheels could evolve, why might they be rare nonetheless?" This environment-specific disadvantage also explains why at least one historical civilization abandoned the wheel as a mode of transport.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:02 UTC on Sunday, 10 September 2023.
For the full current version of the article, see Rotating locomotion in living systems on Wikipedia.
This podcast is produced by Abulsme Productions based on Wikipedia content and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Visit wikioftheday.com for our archives. Please subscribe to never miss an episode. On Mastodon follow us at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.
Abulsme Productions produces the current events podcast Curmudgeon's Corner as well. Check it out in your podcast player of choice.
This has been Ruth Neural. Thank you for listening to featured Wiki of the Day.
|
|
Buy WotD Stuff!!
